Saturday, July 14, 2007 – 18:12
Leslie didn’t have time to be with us today so we strolled around Guadaloupe by ourselves. There’s a lot of second hand stores in that area around the University of Austin. Also the university was the place where Charles Whitman shot and wounded 44 people in 1966.
At night we went to the Alamo Drafthouse movie theater where we saw Transformers while having some nice dinner and a bucket of beers. Nothing like eating your meal while watching a great movie.
After the movie we went to Sam’s house (one of B and Leslie’s friends). He was home alone in his mothers house and was having a house party. It was loads of fun, we partied and some people went into the pool. Leslie didn’t drink so she drove us home to her house were we slept.
Friday, July 13, 2007 – 17:11
We arrived in Austin fairly early in the morning. We went straight to Leslies house and met up with her and her family. After that we decided to go and have lunch in the park with Leslie. We bought some awesome sandwiches at Thundercloud and took them to the park. Very recommendable!. After we had eaten we took a nice walk along the river. Around the early afternoon we had to go and get me a pair of cowboy boots at Allens Boots. You can’t be in Texas without cowboy boots! After I had found myself the perfect pair of “Old Gringos” we took a stroll on South Congress were the girls did some shopping. At night we went with Leslie and her mom and her friends to the local community center were we had vegan food followed by a spiritual energy séance. It was very interesting to try and actually a lot of fun even though neither me, B or Ditte agreed that we would never “convert”. After all of this we all went to the Broken Spoke which is probably one of the best bars any of us has probably ever been to. We danced two-step, drank $4 pitchers of Lone Star beer and had a blast!
Thursday, July 12, 2007 – 7:11
We left Riverbend and started heading towards Austin the capital city in Texas. We didn’t see much and just drove the most of the day through the Texan landscape which is actually quite beautiful, not like we expected at all. We ended up sleeping in the car on some random street in Fredericksburg.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007 – 17:32
Last night was a chilling experience but in the morning it didn’t seem as scary for some reason. We payed our fee and took off. We reached two tiny villages called Magdalene and Kelly Town. This used to be an old mining facility up until the 1950’s where everything was depleted and most of the many thousand people left the city to seek fortune in another place. A creepy place since everything was just abandoned and there was only about a few hundred people left living in the village of Magdalene. Kelly Town was completely deserted except for the town church that was newly redone even though nobody lived in the village. Again we were pretty scared as it reminded us of a place from a movie where they would sacrifice children to some sort of demon god. After we had looked around we had to leave as it was getting way too creepy to be in the area. The mood was eerie, curtains drawn and everything was dead quiet even though people were still around. We drove off towards the Very Large Array where SETI (Search for Extra Terrestial Intelligence) is based. It’s the largest telescope in the world and consists of 27 huge antenna dishes. Many scientists work here around the clock searching for intelligent life in outer space by the use of radiowaves. In the afternoon and after we had seen the array, we drove towards the little town of Truth or Consequences where we got ourselves a room at Riverbend Hot Springs. We soaked in the nice hot springs and relaxed after a few hard days. It was nice to relax and just take it easy after all the driving we had done so far. We met another guest at the hotel called Bud, he told us a little about his life and how he came to this hotel on a regular basis. Later we went downtown to the local market and bought some nice dinner we could cook in our little kitchen in the room. After dinner we decided to take another soak in the warm waters. When we got to the room there was a huge cockroach in our room about 15 cm (6 inches) long. It was huge and the girls screamed. I killed it with my shoe and Bud kept on talking about it creating bad karma but it was all I could think of at that moment.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007 – 5:00
Went into Taos which in the wintertime is a popular skiing resort so there wasn’t much to see and therefor we decided to continue the journey and find some more interesting stuff to see instead. We drove until very late in the evening to reach our planned campground. Unfortunately we didn’t have a real description of the campground and where it was so after driving around in the pitch dark for an hour we found an old, old dirt road with a cattle fence where we had an idea the campground might be. A sign nearby said to drive about 8 km (5 miles) down this road to find the campsite. We drove about 2 km (1 mile) down the road and was scarred shitless as there was no light or anything but fields in the nearby 100 km (160 mile) radius. All of a sudden there was a huge cow on the road and everybody jumped inside the car. With our hearts pounding we decided to keep on going even though it completely reminded of a scene straight out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We finally found the campground and no one was there, no lights, no facilities, no nothing. We set up camp, had dinner and decided to all sleep in the same tent as it was to scary to do anything else.
Monday, July 9, 2007 – 14:05
Had breakfast at a great little restaurant. Walked around Albuquerque old town. The girls wanted to do some shopping so that’s what we did. Went and saw a native Indian museum and saw a performance of old original Indian dances in original clothing and everything. Fun and interesting stuff to see. Drove on towards Santa Fe and looked around there, did some more shopping and had a pop at a little café in the old part of town. Continued towards Taos where we in the last minute decided to live in a Tipi. It was a lot of fun and very weird to live kinda like the Indians used to.
Sunday, July 8, 2007 – 13:00
Up early and continuing towards Albuquerque. We saw a petrified forest which was interesting to see. The trees that have fallen here millions of years ago had been in contact with a special type of environment not found in many places that had caused the trees to become like stone. It was very weird to see a tree trunk on the ground and then touching it only to find out that it only looked like a tree but felt and weighed like stone upon touching it. We entered Albuquerque city limit in the early afternoon and found ourselves a great little hostel named Motel 66, it was a crazy place with all kinds of old bizarre stuff around. There was and old guy managing the hostel that was constantly piss drunk, but very helpful and talkative. He informed us that there was a country music festival that same afternoon/night, so we got ready in a hurry and went and saw what was going on downtown. It was fun to see the entire or at least a great part of the town had gathered for this yearly event. We had a few beers listened to some cool country music and laughed at some people before we decided to get some dinner. Upon recommendation of our friendly host we went to a local Mexican resstaurant down the street. The food was excellent and ther service very friendly. While we where eating a crazy thunderstorm rolled over our part of town. It rained like a madman and stuff blew down the street like toys. Parts of the restaurants roof almost fell off. Wild! After the storm had settled about 30 minutes later and we dared go outside again, we went down to a local and very popular poolbar where we drank a few beers before we decided to go back to our room.
Saturday, July 7, 2007 – 12:53
We drove around the beautiful Sedona park and stopped as a first thing at a place called Sliding Rocks. Luckily for us we were the first ones there because we got there early. We didn’t know it was a very popular place amongst locals and tourists. Sliding Rocks is a natural water park were the streams from the mountains have created a natural oasis of little pools, slides and places you can jump off of in the hot summertime. It’s an amazing place that can’t be described until you see it with you own eyes. After we had splashed around there for a while and there was too many people we decided to continue our journey. We drove to Montesumas Castle which is an old native settlement that is built right into the walls of a great cliff. It has been abandoned for many, many centuries and is now just being upkept as a museum. It was really interesting to see and quite an amazing piece of construction created all by hand by the natives that once lived on the plains around the area. The only problem was that it was so extremely hot that it was almost impossible to breathe let alone walk around in the sun. Then we drove to Flagstaff were Maria had to get off so she could go back to L.A. by train. After she had gotten the train and we had our goodbyes we headed straight towards Albuquerque. On the way we saw the biggest comfirmed meteor crater in the world. It was here that the early tests for the first space travelers took place as it is the place on earth where the environment most closely reminds of what is found on our moon. We stopped midway at Motel 6 for the night as we were tired and decided this was best.
Friday, July 6, 2007 – 3:45
Yet another spectacular day in the Grand Canyon. The temperature was up and the weather was excellent. After packing the car, we spent the majority of the day hiking the 16 km (10 mile) Widfors trail. At the end of the trail there was an incredible view over the canyon. Luckily we got there early so we were the only ones there. The peace and tranquility was amazing, just sitting on the edge looking across the huge gorge. It felt more like being in a painting than to be there in real life, stunning. After the hike we went back to the campground took a quick shower and speed towards Sedona National Park. It was a pretty long drive and about a few hours into the drive we ended up in a huge sandstorm. It was amazing and very scary at the same time. You couldn’t see the road because there was so much sand blowing across. Sometimes a huge gust of wind hit the car and we had to drive very carefully not to end up in the ditch. Fantastic experience. We also had a quick stop when we crossed a beautiful gorge at the Colorado river. We had to stop, take some pictures and look down the 100 m (300 feet) deep, vertical mountain walls. We ended up in Sedona around 10 in the evening where we found a campground, cooked dinner and set up for the night.
Thursday, July 5, 2007 – 13:04
Since we were tenting we got up super early and wanted to hike down into the canyon towards Roaring Springs. It was a 16 km hike (9.4 miles) which should take about 8 hours to complete with a descent into the canyon of about 930 meters (3041 feet) below the rim. It was a beautiful trail but since we didn’t start hiking until 11 in the morning and halfway down there we met a ranger that recommended us to turn around since it was a scolding 48 degrees (120 Fahrenheit). We took his advice and hiked back up which was a lot longer than we had expected. Even though we didn’t reach our final destination we still had a blast and got to see a lot of the canyon. We went back to the camp cooked dinner and was all so tired that we went straight to bed.
